Anatomy Art: Fascination beneath the Surface

This exhibition comes to Belgium having already been shown in seven centres in four countries. With more than six million visitors over five years, it is the most successful exhibition ever. I saw it in Berlin, where it was extended to a further week with 24 hour opening and queues of up to six hours to see more than 200 real but plastinated human anatomical specimens.

Producer Gunther von Hagens is the inventor of the plastination process in which human tissues are impregnated with plastics and silicone rubber to become permanent, colourful, and odourless. His exhibition shows organs, body parts, and whole human bodies amid tasteful green foliage. The dissections are virtuoso pieces with many exploded multiplane views and openings into body cavities. Every hand has a fine ten. don dissection, every perineum shows well tackled wedding tackle. There are superb …